Penny would have put me right. She would have given me a sceptical look and spoken her mind in her famously blunt way. And suddenly all the holes in my rationalising would have been very clear to me. Or maybe they wouldn’t have. The clearest reasoning could have smacked me in the face at that time and I wouldn’t have noticed a thing. And anyway, Penny was unavailable, busy studying for mid-year exams. We talked on the phone, but somehow I never mentioned Simeon. It just never came up.
I began to lead a double life.
(‘How about triple life?’ says Miriam. ‘No, make that quadruple.’)
I saw Jem most nights and whenever I worked at the Sanctuary. I saw Simeon after school when he cruised past in the van, the windows down, the Grateful Dead blasting on the stereo. There were four speakers in the van, Simeon showed me, two attached to the cab doors and two fitted in the back. The back was carpeted and Simeon’s gardening tools were neatly stored in a large custom-made box. A mattress lay on its side against the wall, a rolled sleeping bag and pillow at its head.
‘So I can stay on the job,’ said Simeon, amused, watching me. ‘Handy for all sorts, of course.’ I tried to look disinterested. ‘I can bugger off when the parentals get out of hand,’ he said. ‘For instance.’ I knew he was laughing at me.
‘I heard that your parents never hassle you, no matter how much you provoke them,’ I said, cool.
‘Ooooh, naughty Jemmy, talking out of school. Bad dog.’ He smacked his own behind extravagantly, looking at me from under his white-blonde lashes.
I couldn’t help laughing. And that was the problem, really. Simeon kept making me laugh. Even when he poked outrageous fun at Jem and I protested, it was always more funny than mean. Jem would probably have laughed too, I told myself. Wouldn’t he?
I found their relationship fascinating. Like the Two Little Bears who lived in a Wood (and one of them was Bad and the other was Good). Or Cain and Abel.
It’s research, I told myself, as I dug a wider and deeper hole.
‘Cain and Abel?’ asked Miriam. ‘Interesting. And, earlier, you mentioned the devil.’
‘It felt biblical in its proportions,’ I said.
‘You mean the Original Sin,’ she said. Clever Miriam.
‘Yes!’ I said, startled into an emphatic.
‘And the original sin was not telling Jem right at the beginning.’
‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘And then it just got worse and worse. I just didn’t tell him more and more. And the more I didn’t, the more I couldn’t.’
‘It was a sin of omission,’ said Miriam.
Right on.
‘I’ll show you something,’ said Simeon one Wednesday afternoon in mid-July.
We had a pattern now, an unspoken routine — like an old married couple. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Simeon drove past as I walked home from school. Sometimes I waited at the Swanns Road bridge until he came. I saw other girls watching me as I climbed into the van (Simeon called it The Bus). I knew they thought he was my boyfriend. So much for putting two and two together, I thought, pleased that, what with one thing and another, I had the whole world fooled.
‘Why do you do this?’ I asked him once. He always parked around the road from school, alongside the river. ‘What about your work, don’t they notice?’
‘Who’s they?’ he said. ‘I’m my own boss.’
That figured.
‘Why do you think? What does the Lady of Shalott think? What goes on under her fuzzy red mane?’
‘Don’t call me that.’
He looked at me. ‘Why do you tie your hair up in that plait?’
‘School rules.’
He put out his arm and pulled the elastic tie from the bottom of my French braid, started unravelling it.
‘Don’t do that,’ I said, pulling away. I opened the door and stepped down from the cab. ‘I don’t think we should do this.’
‘Do what?’ said Simeon. ‘We’re just talking, aren’t we? Getting acquainted. Yeah,’ he nodded, liking this idea, ‘I’m getting acquainted with my sister-in-law.’
‘Very funny,’ I said, knowing I should go home, end this exchange and its bubbling undercurrent.
‘Hey, get back in,’ said Simeon. ‘I’ll show you something. C’mon, I won’t touch you, I won’t even think about you, except in a wholesome, lentilish sort of way.’ He let his tongue hang, ludicrously.
‘You’re impossible,’ I said, laughing, climbing back into the van.
He drove back towards school and over the river to Avonside Drive, then turned into a rabbit warren of curved streets with countless houses evenly spaced on small, well-kept sections. The gardens were sparsely planted, with few trees.
‘So, what’s to see?’ There were school kids rollerblading down the concreted drives, toddlers sitting on the gutter edges, poking in the dirty water with sticks.
‘Behold, the bowels of suburbia,’ said Simeon.
‘Show me something I don’t already know about.’
‘I will.’
He turned left and slowed, stopping finally in front of a high wire fence which bordered an overgrown piece of land. A No Trespassing sign was stuck to the locked gate, and another was nailed on a post in the middle of the wasteland. A large building, obviously not a residence, stood about thirty metres back from the fence. It was a grim building, windowless in the front and painted grey all over. Several aerials rose from the grey corrugated-iron roof.
‘What is it?’ I said to Simeon. ‘And what’s it doing in the middle of nappy valley?’
‘Abandoned factory,’ he said, pleased at providing such a surprise.
‘But you’d never know it was here. I mean, I’ve lived virtually over the river from it for two years and I’ve never known about it.’
‘You can see the aerials from your house,’ said Simeon. ‘Shirley High boys know about it. They used to come here to smoke and poke.’
‘Poke?’ I said.
‘Poke, stoke, pork, pet, rut … shall I go on?’ he said, enjoying my red face. ‘Not no more, though. I persuaded them in my charming way that they didn’t really want to come here no more, no sir. It’s l’il ole mine now.’
‘You own it?’
‘In a manner of speaking. The owner is otherwise occupied, detained elsewhere, as it were. At Her Majesty’s pleasure,’ he added, winking.
‘Prison,’ I said, gaping.
‘Prison, Red,’ he said, gaping back.
‘So, you don’t own it, you squat in it.’
‘You got it.’
‘Why?’
‘I need a home away from home, an alternative bide-a-wee, somewhere to conduct my private affairs.’ He did his ludicrous eyebrow waggle. ‘I think of it as my country estate, since it’s got a bit of land around it.’
‘How many people know about it?’ I asked, wondering about Jem.
‘Just you and me, Red,’ whispered Simeon, leaning over towards me. ‘Just you and me.’
‘I’d like to go home now,’ I said, giving him a disgusted look, deciding I really wouldn’t see him again.
‘But you did,’ said Miriam.
‘I didn’t want to,’ I said. ‘I really didn’t. Something just kept drawing me back. I just couldn’t help it.’
‘Couldn’t help it?’ said Miriam, very neutral.
‘No.’
‘You mean you weren’t responsible for your actions?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Miriam.
‘What do you mean, Hmmm?’ I said. ‘Whose side are you on?’
‘Are there sides?’ she said, interested.
I gave her a sour look.
‘Let me just get this right,’ said Miriam. ‘We’re in July and you’re in the thick of your plans for Cleo — you’re talking to Jem about this, at night and at the zoo, whenever you see him. Then, simultaneously, after school, you’re seeing Simeon. Did you talk about Cleo to Simeon?’
‘No,’ I said and waited for her to ask why.
She was silent, turning her rings, looking at her fingers.
I thought about Simeon, his roughened hands on the steering wheel, his blunt fingers rolling a cigarette, the straw-coloured stubble around his chin, prominent when he pursed his lips, sucked hard on his cigarette.
I thought of Jem, stroking Peppy’s back, leaning on the farmyard fence talking to Henry and Min, or, lying beside me, delicately feathering his fingers across my stomach, licking and whispering near my ear.
‘You see,’ I began. ‘It was … I had to …’
‘Yes,’ said Miriam.
‘They had to be … separate, those two times, the times with Jem and the times with Simeon. I thought that if I didn’t tell Simeon anything about me and Jem — what we talked about, what we did — if I kept it all separate, then everything would be okay. So I never said anything about the Sanctuary or Cleo or the Salters or anything else to do with Jem.’
‘What did you talk about, then?’
‘Their family, being a preacher’s son — he was different about that, different from Jem.’
‘What else?’
‘His job, gardens. Music.’
‘Did you talk about his other schemes?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you think he showed you the factory in Galbraith Avenue?’
‘You’re beginning to sound like the cops.’ I glared at her.
‘My motives are quite different, rest assured,’ said Miriam. ‘But what do you think Simeon wanted from you?’
‘Christ! I don’t know. I never put him on the analyst’s couch!’
‘What about the trainee detective? Her instincts weren’t honed? C’mon, Cat. You didn’t have any idea?’
I sighed. ‘I suppose he wanted to stir the pot. Make trouble, piss Jem off, something like that. I told you, it was Cain and Abel, East of Eden. James Dean,’ I added, unnecessarily.
A minute ticked by while Miriam turned her rings, slowly, rhythmically.
‘Interesting that you allowed him in,’ she said at last. ‘Gave him the chance to — what did you call it? — stir the pot.’
‘I did not!’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘No, I bloody well did not!’
‘Why did you keep on seeing him like that, secretly?’
‘Stop interrogating me!’ I shouted. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘The real question,’ said Miriam, calmly, ‘is what was it to you?’
‘It was nothing to me!’ I shouted. ‘I’ve told you that a dozen times — nothing, nothing, nothing. I was just interested in him because he was Jem’s brother. There was nothing else, okay? It was all under control.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
Not really. By the end of July, Simeon and I had eaten sixteen packets of Snifters and Jaffas together. We had sat with a safe distance between us in his van three days a week, talking, watching the dog-walkers and duck-feeders and school kids out the window. Or, on warm days we sat on a riverbank bench watching the water, swollen and dirty after the high winter rainfall. Or, several times, we walked to the Galbraith Avenue factory, entering the property through the back, via an empty section on Avonside Drive. We waded through long wet grass, climbed two fences and crawled under a gap in another.
‘Why am I doing this?’ I said the first time, as we pushed through a tangle of wet bushes and overgrown, rotting grass.
‘Somewhere under your bourgeois hide lies an unused sense of adventure,’ said Simeon.
‘I’m not bourgeois,’ I said, stopping short. We were at the rear of the factory, in a grotto of gorse and trees. There were rusting fridges and stoves buried in the gorse.
‘We don’t smoke dope,’ said Simeon, in Penny’s offended tones.
‘So what?’
‘Straight as a gate.’
‘What am I doing with you, then?’ I said, without thinking.
‘Ah, well, Red, this is what I ask myself daily.’
‘I should go,’ I said, for the thousandth time.
‘Chicken,’ he said softly.
The factory was cavernous inside, partitioned into three vast spaces, with flooring on two levels. The floors were filthy and covered with old community newspapers, advertising fliers.
‘Do-it-yourself carpet,’ said Simeon. ‘Behold the entrance hall.’ He swept his arm around the first big room. ‘My private quarters are yonder. Want to see them?’
‘Pass,’ I said. ‘What did they do here?’
Simeon shrugged. ‘Assembly, repair, not sure.’
‘What do you do here?’
‘Sleep, think, smoke weed. Ravish pretty girls.’ I didn’t react. ‘Just kidding, Red. Actually you’re the first bit of skirt that’s been in here since I took over.’
‘You’re revolting. I can’t believe you’re Jem’s brother.’
Simeon narrowed his eyes at me and started shaking his head slowly. ‘Well, Red, you’ve just violated the bargain, so I get to violate you.’ And before I could register what he’d said, he grabbed my wrists softly and kissed me on the mouth. I kissed him back automatically, and instantly regretted it.
‘Very tasty,’ said Simeon, pulling away, smiling slyly.
‘I hate you,’ I said.
‘Actually, I think that’s a load of crap, Red,’ he said, tough, the smile gone. ‘I think you really fancy me but you’re such a good girl it makes you feel bad fancying someone when you’re tied up with someone else. Eh?’
‘I love Jem,’ I said, feeling my stomach turn over horribly, the panic curl in my bowels.
‘I believe you, I believe you,’ said Simeon, holding up his hands in surrender. ‘He’s thoroughly lovable, I’m sure. ’Cept if his lovable qualities get right up your frigging nose.’
I turned around and walked out, over the rotting wooden threshold, through the whiteware grotto, the hole in the fence. I stopped at the first empty section and bent over, breathing slowly and hard. I could smell the grass and the faint trace of cat urine. I recited my name repeatedly to make the panic recede.
‘Catriona Stuart, Catriona Stuart, Catriona Stuart, Catriona Stuart,’ I said softly into the grass, just as I did at night when the horror crawling over my skin nearly drove me to scream out for Stella. Sweat ran down my back. Sometimes I said Jem’s name too, ‘Jeremiah Hook, Jeremiah Hook, Jeremiah Hook.’ And sometimes I said, Cat loves Jem, Cat loves Jem, Cat loves Jem, over and over, like one of Stella’s old Buddhist mantras.
In a few minutes it stopped and I straightened up, embarrassed now that it was over, wondering if anyone had noticed the lunatic doubled up in the paddock muttering to herself. I walked home round the river, slowly, thinking about Jem, like some kind of oasis, a well of calm, sane, completely together. My saviour.
Tomorrow, I decided, I would bike south and check out the lie of the land for Cleo.
And that was absolutely the last of Simeon Hook.
‘Presumably not,’ said Miriam.
I didn’t respond.
‘You called Jem your saviour.’
‘I exaggerated.’
‘Let’s say Jem was your saviour. What would that make Simeon?’
‘A pain in the arse.’
She smiled faintly. ‘It wasn’t really under control, was it?’
‘Spot on, Shrink.’
‘Where was Stella at?’
‘Snogging with Paul, probably.’
‘Like you and Jem, you mean?’
‘Get stuffed,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ she said, coolly, and walked out.
It was the second week in August and I was thinking hard about Cleo and The Great Escape, as Jem and I called it. Having successfully embargoed just about everything and everyone else in my life, it was the only thing I did think about, apart from Jem.
Stella and I were barely talking after she had brought Paul home for dinner and I had pretended throughout the meal that he was a doctor. It turned out he was a noxious weed inspector with the Ministry of Ag.
‘Ah-ha! He convinced you tobacco is a noxious weed,’ I said to Stella later, when she told me Paul’s job. ‘Sex sure talks, eh Mum?’
Slam bang thank you Ma’am.
I had met Terry, too, round at Freddy’s house, but she was so thoroughly likeable and so utterly unlike Stella that I got depressed, torn between wanting to adopt her or arrange for her to be rubbed out. I tried not to think about the happy couple.
I tried not to think about the Salters too, because if I did I started to get nasty nagging doubts about Cleo. I shut out Angus and Jeannie’s sweet old faces, the fondness and trust in their eyes.
I’d managed to alienate most of the world by that stage. Ms Hattaway was frosty with me. Nan had been cross with me since the cabaret. I’d even had a minor spat with Penny, who’d accused me of childish behaviour towards Dr Paul.
‘Face it, Cat, he’s a nice guy.’
‘So what?’
‘So, he might make Stella happy.’
‘So, angels might fart.’
‘Don’t be silly, Cat,’ she said.
‘Take off the halo, why don’t you,’ I said. Bad move. She hung up on me and didn’t call for a week.
As for Simeon Hook, I’d put him right out of my mind and kept him there. After all, it had amounted to nothing and the nothing wasn’t even happening any more.
So, a week before Tiggie’s eighth birthday I was walking home from school wondering whether to gesture peace to Penny by letting her into the Cleo plan, thereby having an extra person to help with animal-sitting when we made the trek to Arthur’s Pass, when a familiar vehicle drew slowly alongside and the passenger door opened. I kept walking.
‘Hey, Catriona,’ called Simeon. He was leaning out the passenger door. ‘Hey, Catriona, please listen. I’m sorry. Truly sorry. It was out of line.’
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